Diplomatic culture and institutional design: Analyzing sixty years of Antarctic Treaty governance

Abstract

Since 1961 the Antarctic Treaty has been acknowledged internationally as the legitimate forum through which decision-making for the region takes place. Membership growth and the establishment of new conventions are strong indicators of how this international regime has overcome challenges to its functioning, while preserving peace maintenance, scientific cooperation and environmental protection as the main pillars of Antarctic governance. For this special volume of Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Science, this work provides an overview of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings' operation, highlighting how they established specific diplomatic practices: the progressive introduction of issues, the avoidance of contentious issues, and "watereddown", ambiguous text, all of which have enabled parties to circumvent conflict and reach consensual agreement. Based on analysis of the Antarctic Treaty Database, this work shows the main practices developed through the Antarctic Treaty and concludes that the adaptability of Treaty Parties to manage challenges over the last 60 years will unquestionably continue to underpin the regime.

Environmental Governance and International Relations: A Systematic Review of Theories, Methods, and Issues in Latin American Publications

“…Also, as expected, some empirical papers published in the region's journals do not deal with Latin America. In fact, only 4.35% of the articles dealt with broad questions of global environmental politics (Andrade & Costa, 2008;Andrade, 2009;Sampaio, 2022), while one (1.45%) discussed European environmental politics (Domínguez, 2007). Yet they are the exception, since most empirical work seems concerned with problems linked to local resource exploitation, and many are related to land use and forests within the region.…”